George Herbert wrote:
Is there any agreement for there being a manner in
which to demonstrate to
the community's consensus satisfaction that a claimed source has been added
fraudulently and either does not really exist or does not really say what
the citation claims it does?
No. The burden of proving that a source has been fraudulently added is
on the person making the claim of fraud. Whether a source that is not
directly quoted says what is claimed is often a matter of interpretation.
What I seem to have been seeing here is that
there's an unreasonable
tendency to assume that a citation is legitimate.
Why is that unreasonable? Such a presumption (rather than assumption)
is consistent with assuming good faith on the part of the writer.
I would prefer if there
were a healthy degree of skepticism associated with citations - any citation
that does not contain enough information for a reasonable researcher to
locate the original source, or at least verify the existence of the original
source, should be challengable in a reasonable manner.
If you doubt the citation you can always check it out. There should
undoubtedly be standards for what a citation includes. In the unusual
circumstances where you think you have a bogus citation you should start
by asking the contributor about it.
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